Way back in August I brought up the idea that newspapers need to rethink the way they operate if they are to survive the challenges ahead. The hardest thing for most papers to swallow is that they can’t think of them selves as “papers” any more.
Today, all are news organizations, information hubs, web link gatherers, and digital social gathering places for readers. The web comes first, or at least on equal footing with the paper product. Weekly newspapers are now dailies, because of the web.
In a sense, that is good because it levels the playing field a bit. Who do you think can win the battle of hyper-local news: large metropolitan dailies or your local community weeklies?
Here are some things you can do to make your web site more valuable in your community and gain more page views (and make your advertisers happy!).
1. Even weeklies need to update the web site on a daily basis. Put breaking stories up on the web site immediately. Update often. Beat the local dailies. You can follow up in the paper. Make one of your “beats” the web site so someone is responsible for instant updates. Put the more “timeless” stories in the paper.
2. Don’t be afraid to link to other sites. Your readers will look to you if you create “Link Central,” a go-to site for places to go to on the web. Dig out public records online and publish them in an easy-to-get-to way. People would love to find out real estate appraisals, public official salaries, divorces, and so on. It’s all free info and not that hard to gather and publish.
3. Speaking of other sites, be sure to work a deal with your advertisers where they link to you. That will definitely increase page views, especially if you create downloadable coupons.
4. As mentioned in an earlier newsletter, create social networking areas for readers. Create forums and e-newsletters (use an autoresponder) based around special interest groups within your communities: schools, prep sports, churches, young mothers,etc.
5. Speaking of schools, your local high schools (and other schools, too!) represent a tremendous opportunity besides the obvious coverage of every sport at every school with lots of reader-uploaded photos. Use a program that refreshes ads with every click through the gallery.
The other angle is to become sort of an online newspaper/yearbook for the schools. With current budget cuts, yearbooks and newspapers at schools are either ridiculously expensive or they are being cut entirely. Why not be the go-to place for that content? At the end of the year, you could even group the year’s photos and stories together and create a scrapbook for each school. You could even get some of the high schoolers to put the booklet together as a class project. I think advertisers would eat that up.
6. Finally, use the free Google Analytics system to see how people are arriving at your web sites and what keywords they use. Then use that information to improve your search engine rankings. I don’t think this is all that important for weeklies and that local marketing of your web site will prove more effective, but you may as well use every tool in your arsenal.
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